CYCLING AND MOTORING.

Taranaki Daily News, 27 April 1916, Page 7

CYCLING AND MOTORING.

NEWS SAND NOTES. Motoring organisations should make it a practice of encouraging the touring spirit, and, preferably, of encouraging touring in their respective places. Travel in these days is a part of life. Modern facilities for locomotion are such that everybody can see the homeland beauties and wonders easily and cheaply The touring spirit as it applies to motorists is a modern acquirement. It arises out of a love for road travel for the pleasures that road travel affords. Travelling at leisure is touring for pleasure is an axiom that should be regarded by the party adopting the mo-tor-car a# a conveyance. To the thoughtful traveller the journey by motor is everything, not the mere desiro to "get there." It is more enjoyable to travel hopefully than to arrive. A mere dash from place to place will result in under-exposed snapshot effects and lost opportunities; therefore a tour carried out in the true touring spirit should l>e one limited in speed hut unlimited in leisure. Everything that is worth seeing en route should be seen without haste and without waste of opportunity. That is where the motor-car has the advantage of the railway time and again. There the railway shoots through a tunnel or into a cutting; the motor-ear elevates the passengers easity and without effort to the beauty spots and affords them prospects of the glorious outlooks far and wide. Where the open road invites the traveller, there the motor-car will take him.

Some interesting particulars have been issued by the X.S.W. Trailers' Association, which serves to illustrate the fact that the majority of cars now sold are not purchased with a view to pleasure purposes, but. as a necessity in the various channels of commerce, agriculture and manufacture. The leading motor firms of New South Wales were circularised and asked to fill in a return giving the lust 100 cars sold by them, and for what purpose cms were obtained. The result is as under:—(a) Business or professional use only, such as st-oek and station, commission, insurance and other agents, surveyors, travellers, doctors, hire carj, mail services, etc., 798 cars, or 50 per cent, of total sales; (b) farmers and pastoralists, 387 cars, or 24 per cent.; (cj business and pleasure, i.e., cars used partly for each purpose, 210 ears, or 13 per cent., (d) pleasure only, 205 cars, or 13 per cent. Tlie figures afford interesting reading. Most people, not in close touch with the industry, regard the motor-car a.s a luxury, and desire to see it taxed as heavily as possible. The figures given above, showing'only 205 ears out of 1600, or 13 per cent., as sold for "pleasure only," will be an eye-opener to them. A Tasmanian motor-cyclist in R. Stearnes has succeeded in reducing the five miles motor-cycle road record, standing at 4min 43sgc., to the credit of'.T:' Booth (Victoria). -The new figures are 4min +0 S-osec., and were established on a 7-h,p_ Indian, and Stearne's speed averages 04 m.p.h.